My first Twitter trade

Twitter... it's a thing. Some people love it, some people hate it, some people love and hate it. Some people can't live without it, some people live just fine without it. Love it or hate it though, it's not going away anytime soon.

Personally speaking, I'm not very good at the social media, and it often makes me feel considerably older than I actually am, which isn't a good thing. Twitter has been good for the blog, and it's allowed me to get to know a few fellow bloggers a little better (in one particular case, a lot better), both of which have been good things. On the flip side though, there's a lot of rabble rousing going on, arguments over extremely trivial things, plenty of name calling, and lots of politics -- and all of the propaganda and misinformation that goes hand-in-hand with politics on social media as well.

Another popular thing on the Twitter, at least amongst card collector's, is trading. There seems to be a lot of good and bad with that as well, more good than bad though (at least from what I've been able to gather). I think I've been using the site for about a year and a half now, and up until two weeks ago, had never used it for trading before. This is mostly because a) formal trading isn't something that I enjoy doing a lot of, and b) most of the stuff I see people wanting to trade away tends to be of the higher end variety, which is something that I don't collect -- and even if I was interested in any of it, I wouldn't have anything to trade for it, as usually folks are looking for other high end stuff in return, which is the kind of stuff that I don't have for trade.

A few weeks ago though, Adam, who goes by the handle Alindz99, tweeted out that he had gotten a binder of 90's basketball cards, all (or least the majority of them) of which were going to be available for trade... 90's?.. Basketball?... My interest was officially piqued!

I don't collect a lot of base cards anymore, even stuff from the 90's, I've already seen it all way too many times, or I already have what I want (for the most part) -- but I do love me some 90's inserts and parallels, so I went ahead and asked if this binder contained any such things.

The binder did contain such things, I have pictures to prove it, speaking of pictures, Adam really went above and beyond by sending me literally dozens of binder page pictures via DM, it seemed like an awful lot of effort considering how small the trade ended up being, but it was an effort that I very much appreciated nonetheless.

Anyways, I got lots of pictures sent to me, most of the inserts were one's that I already had, and didn't really need any duplicates of, but there were two that stood out -- and not because they're crazy rare and valuable or anything, no, in fact they're both cards that can routinely be found in dime boxes. Instead they stood out because I didn't already have one of them, and the other is a card that I'm trying to get an entire pages worth of.

First up is the "new to me" card:



1994-95 Fleer 1st Year Phenom #8

It seems like it's been a lifetime since Big Dog's rookie season! Drafted in the #1 spot, Glenn had a ton of hype coming into the NBA, which I think he did a pretty good of living up to, or at least as good as anyone could playing for Milwaukee at that time.

1994-95 Fleer Super Star #4

Did anyone have more inserts than Fleer during the mid 90's? I don't think so! I have found four copies of this card in dime boxes during the last year or so, which is fine by me, because I absolutely love this card, enough so to chase an entire page's worth. With this latest acquisition, I am now more than halfway towards completing this goal. I feel the need to note too, that the card isn't miscut or anything, it was just a really bad picture by me, the cracked screen on my phone is really making the act of taking well centered pictures quite difficult (I know, first world problem).

So that's it, a two-card trade, certainly not the biggest Twitter trade ever, nothing like the one's that Matt routinely pulls off, but I'm still pretty happy with it, I might even have to try it again sometime.

I only spend about ten minutes a day on the site (there just isn't that much for me), so I'm glad that I saw this trade opportunity during one of those short stints, kind of makes me want to spend a little more time on there, just in case something else similar ever arises (kind of).

Thanks again for the trade, Adam! And to everybody else, go give him a follow, you certainly could do worse :)


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What to do?

While checking out the Twitter this morning, I noticed that someone who I happen to be following liked a tweet, therefore said tweet showed up in my timeline. No big deal, right? Annoying as it may be, it happens all the time. The liked tweet was from someone that I have not heard of before, in which they mentioned finding a couple of vintage cards that they had forgotten were in their possession. One of those cards just happened to set off my internal alarm bells, so much so, that I felt the need to write this impromptu post:

Anyone who remembers my series of Sportlots posts from a couple of months ago shouldn't be too surprised as to why this card jumped out at me, what with the tell-tale rounded corners, and lack of any other edge wear. I don't want to come right out and say that it's a fake (even though it is), but it is certainly highly suspicious, to say the least.

So far none of the commenters have said anything about it, and I'm not going to say who, but one of said commenters is someone that should have been able to spot it for what it is... unless of course, he did, but isn't comfortable saying so.

So, it leaves wondering, is it my place to tell someone whom I've never had any interaction with, that their card is a fake highly suspicious? Or do I just let it go? The latter of which, I don't think I can do, because I know if the roles were reversed, I would want someone to voice their concerns. And since were not following each other, I can't contact them via direct message, so if I did say something, it would have to be visible to everyone else, which could potentially cause them some embarrassment... which is something I really wouldn't prefer to do. Any advice, or thoughts, would be most welcome.


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I am now on the Twitter!

I don't if anyone will care or not, but as you may have guessed by the title, I have decided to give Twitter a chance. It's probably going to take me a few days (or weeks) to figure out what's what, so I'm not going to be tweeting up a storm anytime soon, but for those interested, I can be found here @pennysleeves.


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